Английского

§ 6. The syntactico-distributional classification of words is based 
on the study of their combinability by means of substitution test-
ing. The testing results in developing the standard model of four 
main "positions" of notional words in the English sentence: those 
of the noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A), adverb (D). Pronouns are 
included into the corresponding positional classes as their substi-
tutes. Words standing outside the "positions" in the sentence are 
treated as function words of various syntactic values. 

---

44
Here is how Ch. Fries presents his scheme of English word-classes 
[Fries]. 
For his materials he chooses tape-recorded spontaneous conversa-
tions comprising about 250,000 word entries (50 hours of talk). 
The words isolated from this corpus are tested on the three typical 
sentences (that are isolated from the records, too), and used as sub-
stitution test-frames: 
Frame A. The concert was good (always). 
Frame B. The clerk remembered the tax (suddenly). 
Frame C. The team went there. 
The parenthesised positions are optional from the point of view of 
the structural completion of sentences. 
As a result of successive substitution tests on the cited "frames" the 
following lists of positional words ("form-words", or "parts of 
speech") are established: 
Class 1. (A) concert, coffee, taste, container, difference, etc. (B) 
clerk, husband, supervisor, etc.; tax, food, coffee, etc. (C) team, 
husband, woman, etc. 
Class 2. (A) was, seemed, became, etc. (B) remembered, wanted, 
saw, suggested, etc. (C) went, came, ran,... lived, worked, etc. 
Class 3. (A) good, large, necessary, foreign, new, empty, etc.Class 
4. (A) there, here, always, then, sometimes, etc. 
(B) 
clearly, sufficiently, especially, repeatedly, soon, etc. 
(C) 
there, back, out, etc.; rapidly, eagerly, confidently, etc. 
All these words can fill in the positions of the frames 
without affecting their general structural meaning (such as "thing 
and its quality at a given time" — the first frame; "actor — action 
— thing acted upon — characteristic of the action" — the second 
frame; "actor — action — direction of the action" — the third 
frame). Repeated interchanges in the substitutions of the primarily 
identified positional (i.e. notional) words in different collocations 
determine their morphological characteristics, i.e. characteristics 
referring them to various subclasses of the identified lexemic 
classes. 
Functional words (function words) are exposed in the cited process 
of testing as being unable to fill in the positions of the frames 
without destroying their structural meaning. These words form lim-
ited groups totalling 154 units. 
The identified groups of functional words can be distributed among 
the three main sets. The words of the first set are used as specifiers 
of notional words. Here belong determiners of nouns, modal verbs 
serving as specifiers of notional 

---

45
verbs, functional modifiers and intensifiers of adjectives and ad-
verbs. The words of the second set play the role of inter-positional 
elements, determining the relations of notional words to one an-
other. Here belong prepositions and conjunctions. The words of the 
third set refer to the sentence as a whole. Such are question-words 
{what, how, etc.), inducement-words (lets, please, etc.), attention-
getting words, words of affirmation and negation, sentence intro-
ducers (it, there) and some others.